Managing the Sales Pipeline

Notes to accompany the “Managing Sales Pipeline” webinar

Intro

Really Simple Systems CRM Sales Pipeline allows you to keep a track of sales deals that you or your sales team are looking to close. With our easy opportunity management, you can track your sales deals all the way through from lead to customer. In this section, we will walk you through how to use the sales pipeline and how you can customise the opportunities section to best suit your business sales cycle.

Sales Dashboard Widgets

On the sales dashboard, you will find a number of widgets that give you an overview of your sales deals. The Sales Funnel gives you an overview of all of your current deals and where they are in the sales process. You also have the ability to click on a particular stage of the funnel. It will allow you to view all of the current opportunities that are at that stage.

The sales grid also allows you to see a breakdown of sales by each sales person. The total number of sales they have closed and what deals they have in their pipeline. Our support team can help you change the overview to show sales by month or by quarter depending on your business sales cycle.

Opportunity Management

Really Simple Systems CRM allows you to track and manage your sales opportunities. An Opportunity is simply any sales deal that you are hoping to close. To add a new opportunity, you first need to go into the Account where you are looking to add your new deal. Once you are on the Account page scroll down to the Opportunity grid. On the right-hand side, you will see a green button called “Add Opportunity”. Press the button and you can start filling out the details of your new sales deal. You can add an unlimited number of Opportunities to an Account.

Adding a new Opportunity

Once on the Opportunity page, you will notice that the Opportunity Name defaults to the Account name. If you would like to change the name of the Opportunity, simply delete the Account name and type in a new name to better reflect the deal. For example, if the Opportunity is a re-order or an upgrade. After giving your opportunity a name you then set the Close Date for the deal. The Close Date automatically defaults to 6 weeks in the CRM system. If you have a shorter or longer sales cycle our support team can change the default time for you. You can then fill out the rest of your Opportunity fields.

Opportunity fields

Status is the stage of the sales cycle, for example, a new deal or a won deal. You can change the dropdown list selection by going to Set-up, Manage Look Up Tables and going into OpportunityStatus. Fill out your selection and press update to save

Next step is a free text line for you to add in your own next step

Forecast lets you decide whether or not the deal is included in your Sales. If you would like to edit the dropdown list you can do so by going to Set-up, Manage Look Up Tables and going into OpportunityForecasting, fill out your selection and press update to save

Probability is the percentage chance that the deal will go though. Any deal set to 0% is lost and any deal set as 100% is won. A deal that has yet to be closed will be between 1% and 99%. Giving your deal a percentage chance of how likely it’s to close will give you a weighted and unweighted value of your deal. The unweighted value of your deal is the total value of the deal while the weighted value is the combined value of all of your opportunities giving you a statistically valid value of what you are likely to sell in total

Competitor is who you are competing against for the deal, if you know

Source shows you which of your marketing sources the deal came from. It will automatically default to the Account source but you can type in another source if you want to

Loss Reason if the deal is lost you can add the reason here. It’s a dropdown list and you can add in your own selection by going to Set-up, Manage Look Up Tables, go into the OpportunityLossReason and edit the selection then update

Description is a free text field where you can add in more information about the Opportunity

Win/Loss Report gives you space to add in information about the deal after it has been won or lost

Opportunity line

Once you have completed the details of your new Opportunity it’s time to add in the value of the deal. On your opportunity line, you will see a field for quantity. This is how many product/session units or sets you are selling in the deal. You then have a field for your product(s) with a dropdown list for you to choose what product the deal is for. You can change the dropdown list to match your own products by going to Set-up, Manage Look Up tables. Go into the table for OpportunityLine, add in your product selection and press update at the bottom of the page to save.

Once you have selected the correct product you then add in the unit price. The unit price is the price of the product. If you are selling several of the same product, the system will automatically calculate the total value of the deal once you save it. Once the Opportunity is saved, you will be able to view it in the Account that the Opportunity is for. Or by going to Opportunities on the main menu.

Getting Support

If you have any problems creating an Opportunity or have any questions about managing your opportunities not covered in this section, please contact our support team on support@reallysimplesystems.com.

History

You can view the Opportunity History at the bottom of the Opportunity under the Opportunity lines. The opportunity history shows you all the changes and updates that have been made to the Opportunity.

If a change is made to the Opportunity within 2 hours of the Opportunity being created the change will not be recorded under the Opportunity History.

Reports

In the Reporting section of the CRM, you will be able to run Forecasting reports on all your opportunities. To run a new forecast report please go to the reporting tool on the main menu and press the green Add Forecast Report button. You can then set up the report, for example, if you want to see sales by a particular sales person or for a set time frame. The Forecast report writer allows you to report on backdated sales as far as 2 years ago. You can choose to make the reports available to all users in the system by ticking the “Make it available to everyone” before saving or leave the checkbox blank so only you have access. You can also export reports as spreadsheets for further analysis.

About the Author

Jessica Kuznia is a content writer for Really Simple Systems and a current postgraduate student in Organisational Psychology at the University of Leeds. Her areas of knowledge include data security, CX, business strategy & IT.